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SCARBOROUGH FAIR is currently hosting a Flash Fiction and Poetry Contest open to all University of Toronto Students. The strongest pieces will be selected by a panel of judges and be published by Scarborough Fair.

Cover 2015

The Cover, 2015

by Kevin Connery

THIS YEAR Scarborough Fair was focused on the artists who make up our creative community. My goal from the beginning was to show the faces behind some of the incredible talent we have on campus. So much of art and writing is deeply personal and introspective. It's done alone. I wanted to bridge the space between the artists who are working quietly and unobserved, making the amazing things that they make, and us who consume work. I wanted more than just names under titles. A name under a title is often overlooked, and it can be kind of meaningless. It is a symbol without a referent.

Working with a very talented young photographer I incorporated artist portraits into Scarborough Fair. They became that missing referent. I wanted the people who pick up the magazine for the first time, people who are perhaps writers and artists themselves, to see real faces and real students like themselves. If we need anything at UTSC we need communication. We need all the people working privately to stand up and stand together, to work with one another so that they can accomplish more than they could have individually. This is the foundation of community.

After the portraits were shot I was left wondering about the cover. The 2014 floral cover was meant to be iconic. It was the face of our rebranding effort. I designed that cover based off a similar design for a wedding invitation, the idea behind it in my mind being that, like a flower, the magazine was meant to be given away, passed out, bunched together, or torn up. I wanted the people who saw Scarborough Fair on stands to take a moment and pick a copy for themselves. This years cover had to do something else; it had to be inviting, but in a different way. And like the portraits, I wanted it to be personal, intimate even.

The layout design for the magazine's interior is very clean and the cover had to match that, but not feel sterile. I wanted to feature a personal space, a bedroom, but I didn't want it to look too staged. The final images were clean and neat, but also slightly disheveled. They weren't perfect.

It is my sincere hope that you will enjoy this edition of Scarborough Fair and that my cover will have added to that. Whether you look at this and you see a cozy room on lazy Sunday, or a messy bedroom suggesting sleeping late after a night of over indulgence, know that disorder is good—it’s honest—and from it come the sparks of our creativity.

If you liked the cover and this edition of Scarborough Fair and you want to show it off, please take a picture of yourself with it and post it to our Facebook page.